We might hope to be able to wind down the summer on a hopeful note –
hope, maybe, that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – that are daily taking
their grim toll of human lives and threatening the lives of countless
innocent civilians – we might hope that a just and peaceful resolution
to those wars was in sight, but no, the wars rage on, and hope is hard
to find.
Happily, we got some hope in today’s passage
from Isaiah. The words were something of a healing balm: “Thus says the
Lord, say to those whose hearts are frightened: be strong, fear not!
Here is your God. He comes…to save you. He comes with vindication; with
divine recompense he comes to save you!” Those words, spoken long ago to
a broken and defeated people in exile in a foreign land, can give us
hope today as we try to make sense out of two seemingly endless wars and
countless acts of violence around the world that dominate the news
cycle. So, even though, in Isaiah’s words, our hearts are frightened, we
can have confidence - confidence in the God who long ago promised
salvation to the people, and who alone can bring it about. We know the
limits of human power and of military might, but we also know the power
of God!
So, listen again to those words of hope that
God put in Isaiah’s mouth: “The eyes of the blind will be opened, the
ears of the deaf will be cleared. The lame will leap like a stag, and
the tongue of the dumb will sing. Streams will burst forth in the
desert…burning sands will become pools and the thirsty ground springs of
water.” In other words, Isaiah was saying, there is hope: deliverance
will come, and it will come, not from anything the people would do, but
from God, the compassionate God, ever faithful to the Covenant.
That’s a message we need to hear, too, my
friends. With way too-long a litany of nations and peoples at war, with
all the violence in our streets and schools, Isaiah’s message is one we
most certainly need to hear: “Be strong, fear not…God comes to save
you!” God opens blind eyes, frees deaf ears, makes the lame leap like
stags, and causes streams to burst forth in the burning desert sands.
This God who has power to bring about such amazing physical changes in
our world has power to change us, too, and through us, to bring about
change in our wounded world.
This power of God broke into our world in a
most unique way in the healing, compassionate ministry of Jesus Christ.
We witnessed it in today’s gospel where Jesus healed the deaf mute. It
was as if Jesus was saying, ‘You know Isaiah’s great prophecy about the
ears of the deaf being cleared and the tongue of the mute singing? Well,
open your eyes and see these very things coming to pass right now! God
is true to his promises. At this moment,’ Jesus is saying, ‘at this
moment, in my ministry, God is in your midst saving you and delivering
you!’
And some people got the message. “He has done
all things well,” they said of Jesus. Those are words that can apply
only to God, wouldn’t you agree? Only God does all things well. But
those words call to mind another story in the Bible, a very familiar
one: the first of the creation stories in Genesis where “God looked at
everything he had made and found it very good.” For me, “He has
done all things well” echoes those very words from Genesis, and well
they should because in doing all things well Jesus was showing that he
shared in God’s own creative power. The God who created all things from
nothing and found them very good was now re-creating all things in and
through his son Jesus who did all things well.
And, my friends, this work of re-creating still goes on
– in the Church. It’s in and through the likes of you and me that God
continues to live and act in our world. In a frightened and broken
world, a world where there is so much wrong: so much deafness and
blindness, so much inhumanity, so much hatred and violence, so much
fear, our call is clear: we are to do the works of Jesus who did all
things well – Jesus, the peacemaker, the reconciler, the healer. For
followers of Jesus there is no room for violence or retribution; there
is only room for love – his love - and we are to bring his love, his
compassion, his healing wherever we can and to whomever we can.
And it is the Eucharist that makes all of this
possible. Think of it: the sacrament of Christ’s Body broken for
us and his Blood poured out for us empowers us, energizes us so we can
do our part in transforming this beautiful but broken world into the New
Creation!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|
|
